The town developed in the 7th century as an
Alemannic settlement in the Virgunna forest next to the
Franconian-
Swabian border. In 764 the Frankish noble
Hariolf,
Bishop of Langres, founded a
Benedictine monastery,
Ellwangen Abbey, on a hill next to the settlement. The monastery was mentioned in a document of
Louis the Pious as
Elehenuuwang in 814. It became a
Reichsabtei in 817. From 870 to 873 the
Byzantine Greek "Apostle of the Slavs"
Saint Methodius was imprisoned in Ellwangen, after he had been arrested by
Ermanrich, bishop of Passau. He was set free in 873 thanks to the intervention of
Pope John VIII. The monastery was "exempt" from 1124 on (maybe earlier), which means it was directly responsible to the pope. The
abbots were granted
Reichsfreiheit in 1215. The office of
Vogt was first held by the counts of
Oettingen, from 1370 on by the counts of
Württemberg. In 1460 the abbey was converted into an exempt house of
secular canons, led by a
prince-provost and a chapter consisting of 12 noble
canons and 10
vicars. Initially its territory included the districts of Ellwangen, Tannenberg and Kochenburg. The district of Rötlen was acquired in 1471,
Wasseralfingen in 1545, and
Heuchlingen in 1609. In 1588 and from 1611 to 1618 about 450 people in Ellwangen were killed in
witch-hunts. After the
German Mediatisation of 1802, Ellwangen became a part of the
duchy of Württemberg. At first it was the government seat of Neuwürttemberg, the territories Württemberg had acquired by mediatisation. In 1803 the town became centre of a district (
Oberamt), which in 1806 was included into the new
Kingdom of Württemberg. In 1807 Ellwangen became seat of the
Jagstkreis (Jagst District), until the district was merged into a larger unit in 1924. The king of Württemberg, who had acquired large areas with a predominantly
Roman Catholic population, wanted Ellwangen to become the seat of a Roman Catholic
diocese. To achieve this, in 1812 he founded an
ordinary and a
seminary, as well as a Roman Catholic theological
faculty. The faculty was soon moved to
Tübingen, where it became part of
Eberhard Karls University. In 1817, the seminary and the ordinary went to
Rottenburg am Neckar, which in 1821 became the seat of the newly formed diocese for Württemberg.
20th and 21st centuries During
World War I, in 1916–1917, Germany operated a special
prisoner-of-war camp for ethnic
Polish officers from the Russian Army, with the aim of subjecting them to propaganda and conscripting them into a planned German-controlled Polish army to fight against Russia (Poland was partitioned between Germany, Russia and Austria at the time). After World War II members of the
17th SS Panzergrenadier Division were convicted of a number of war crimes, involving the shooting of foreign
concentration camp prisoners in Ellwangen during the war. In April 1945,
US Army troops occupied Ellwangen and until 1946, stationed various Army units at the
kaserne — the former German Tank School. From 1946 the
International Refugee Organization (IRO) used the kaserne as a
displaced persons' camp for 3,000 Ukrainian refugees until 1951. In 1951, the US Army — the combat engineer battalion and medical battalion of the
28th Infantry Division again took over the facility. In September 1955 the Americans returned the kaserne to the German government. In April and May 2018,
two police raids at a migrant shelter in the town led to national and international media attention and a public debate about legal deportations. ==Transport==